Ok. We bump into your project thanks to Dorina, a greek friend living in Madrid. The experience was like that: we were in La Graciosa, the smallest island in Canary Island, before sunset time and we opened a Tequila. She took out from her bag Teaporacle and then our present and future change.

– So, who is behind Teapot Oracles? And how did you meet & decide to start the project?ODI I’m an art conservator, illustrator and tarot reader. I use tarot mostly for self-development, as much as spiritual and emotional healing. I find this tool very useful in my everyday life and it seems it has the same effect to those I give a reading to. I also find very interesting the art in the various decks.

For a long time, I was flirting with the idea of creating my own tarot deck and give readings to others for a living. The problem was that I felt a bit scared to get out from my little tarot closet. You see, I come from a family of sceptics and I live in a country were being a tarot reader is weird and often people think it’s a fraud. Suddenly I realized that finding an “accomplice” will make things easier for me to show, mostly to the people I know, what I do.

One day, someone showed me a beautiful little bοx of soaps with Iliana’s minimal designs. I loved her work as it was the exact opposite of what I draw. A couple of days later I came across her and told her my idea to make an art exhibition based on tarot. She was excited (I was excited too), and we started working on our new project.

ILI Odette had this brilliant idea of gathering artists (I am a graphic designer & illustrator) to create a tarot deck and make an exhibition. I said yes with no second thoughts. Our energies combined so well, that we decided to actually make a dialogue and create the Teapot Oracles, just the two of us, back to back.

– Can you introduce us Teapot Oracle?
Teapot oracles is a limited edition (200 and that’s it!) 44 card deck composed by two contrasting Major Arcanas. One (Odette’s part) is free spirited and colorful, while the other (Iliana’s part) is black and white, of minimalistic and straightforward character. The duality of the deck might bring in mind the Yin Yang where both sides must be equally balanced for the energy to move freely. Teapot oracle deck is to help the user balance their free spirit with their organized self, their colorful side with their black and white.

– Why a teapot?ODI Because of the tons of tea we drank together until we finally came up with the logo and eventually the name of the deck.

ILI Well, we had loads of tea while brainstorming and chatting about the subject.

– What does it mean for your future? And present?ODI It is the catalyst for showing this important part of myself to others and mostly to my family and friends that had no idea what I was doing (it is so liberating to be yourself) and who knows what more it will bring, I can’t wait to find out.

ILI it definitely opened some horizons. I had the opportunity to think about my life, myself and others – having such a theme to work on. Studying each card separately – for which I had just read some basics – guided me to some of my desires, revealed things for myself that I had not seen, brought me anger, sorrow, joy, confidence; to sum it up, it opened up a new window. This is the magic of the cards. From the personal journey of life, to the journey of creation by understanding it. This is helpful enough for the future!

– Which is the most striking experience you’ve had related with tarot?ODI One of the most powerful experiences I had was a tower tarot card that was stocking me from spread to spread for months. It was like it didn’t even care that the question had nothing to do with the answer I was receiving. The tower was always there “screaming” that I needed to stop pretending that things were as they supposed to be. It was more than clear that nothing else mattered than destroying this rotten tower. After a lot of resistance, I finally turned my tower down, cleared a big mess from my life and the card hasn’t appeared to me for a long time. (until lately in some occasions, but thankfully for completely different reason.)

ILI: working with ODI and making magic together!
The thing is, that studying the cards and talking openly to each other, I had many ups and downs realizing some things about me. I think I opened up (a lot) and became more honest with myself and the people I mostly care about. I also closed some doors (hehehe)

– Which is the power of tarot? How can it help in our daily life?ODI Tarot is just a pack of images that are able to create a bridge of communication between our higher self and ego. The thoughts, feelings and sensations we get as we look at the tarot cards (both reader and listener) are usually enough to bring on the surface things from the past, or patterns that became obstacles to our personal growth and daily life. It can also be used as a compass when we feel lost and aren’t able to make important (or less important) choices. You see, finding our true power and being able to communicate with our soul, gain personal growth and healing is a major thing. But resolving minor problems in our everyday life is of same importance. By making our everyday life easier we create more time and peace of mind to work with the rest “major” issues. We shouldn’t forget that our purpose is not only to find our lost spirituality but to get grounded and to live a life in balance with the rest of our community without neglecting our inner needs. That seems to be much harder than any other task. A simple tarot reading can help all of us with this task.

ILI It is a good day-to-day life navigation. It is important as it lets me slow down, in a world where, unfortunately, i often feel stressed.

– How did you come up with the idea of mixing art and the Oracle deck?ODI I believe that most (if not all) the decks are art objects. And that’s why I chose the tarot as a healing tool and not any other tool. I feel comfortable around colors and images. To answer your question, presenting our Teapot to my “community” as an art project first and then as a spiritual tool, made the whole thing more accessible to sceptics.

ILI it is amazing how many decks there are and all of them are art to me.How did you start it? What about the crowdfunding? ODI We started out with great financial difficulties and crowdfunding seemed like a great idea to help print the deck. I have backed many oracle decks from crowdfunding websites and most of them succeeded. We thought that we had nothing to lose. We had very limited time to focus on our crowdfunding page as we had an art exhibition to organize and still we weren’t sure of our final goal. Our page couldn’t communicate what we were planning to do as we didn’t know either! We needed time to find balance between our diverse ways of working and our different flow and that made it even more difficult at first.

We are lucky enough to have some friends and family supportive of what we do (thank you so much guys!) and the fact that someone from the other side of the world decides to buy our little deck without even knowing us and before even seeing the final outcome, felt already a huge victory. Magically, even though we didn’t reach our goal we managed to print the deck.

Which are the main differences between yours and other Oracles?

This is the only deck that carries two opposite energies giving a view of the same symbolisms from two different perspectives.

The composition of our deck makes it easier to understand some things about the person you are giving the reading to, and point to the kind of energy that he has to work with in order to overcome any challenge. Depending on which type of card comes up in the reading, the reader can understand whether the “problem” is spiritual or material. For example, a person who gets more of Ilis’ designs is probably a well-organized personality who tends to be a perfectionist whereas someone whose cards mostly come from Odis’ designs can get the opposite message.

Another feature of this deck is that depending on whose artists’ card you get you can tell if the problem comes from an everyday situation or it is a matter of a deeper and spiritual nature. Somehow even though we created a major arcana deck we managed without even planning it, to add the qualities of a minor arcana. This can make clear, which aspect of his life one needs to work on. Isn’t that cool? 😊

Who did the designs?
We made designs based on subjective experiences, hopes and fears. Each card represents perfectly who we are and how we deal with our world.

Where does the inspiration to create it come from?ODI From my personal need to create a deck that I can 100% identify myself with. I have the feeling that every tarot writer gets inspired from that need.

ILI Personal experiences and hidden (or not) desires.

Your favourite card?

ODI The Sun

ILI The lovers by ili, temperance by Odi

What would you say to people who think tarot is just a piece of paper?
They are right.

The future of tarot? ODI I think more and more people are open to use any tool that brings balance to their life. I suppose many will choose tarot for that. It can be a very fun and easy tool to use (if you are open to receive the message and use it for the highest good of all) and the fact that there are millions of decks out there corresponding to million of different energies makes the tarot accessible to any type of person regardless spiritual believes, culture, esthetics.